Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (39 page)

THE SMALL LORNIAN scouting squad reined up along the ridge line. To the west, the road curved halfway down the gentle hill, not too sharply, but tightly enough that the Cyadoran wagon drivers would have to slow as they climbed. Those drivers, already on the road from Syadtar, according to Ayrlyn's air scouting, would not be able to see around the next curve where the road began to wind between the hills until it reached the straight stretch that began the long haul to Syadtar.

   “Well... will this do?” asked Ayrlyn. She glanced over her shoulder toward the northwest-in the general direction of the mines-and the Cyadoran lancers that they had avoided earlier in the day.

   “They weren't headed in our direction,” Nylan said, respending to her look, and not her inquiry. “Not even toward Fornal.”

   “They rode toward Jerans,” said Tonsar. “That will not please Ildyrom.”

   “Better Ildyrom than Fornal right now.” Nylan surveyed the site and nodded. The Cyadoran supply wagons would have to come nearly to a halt as they climbed toward the mines. “This looks very good.”

   “Good,” grunted Ayrlyn. She massaged her forehead. “What are we doing?” asked Tonsar. “We scouted the other part of the road an eight-day ago, and you said that was good. Now this is good. Will we not use the other place, or ...” The burly armsman's hands and arms completed the question.

   “That was good, and so is this. That was for one set of wagons. This is for another.”

   Ayrlyn shook her head at Nylan's obfuscation. “The Cyadorans can't live off the land. There are too many of them. Even we have to get some supplies by wagon. So, what happens if they start getting short on supplies?”

   “But the lord of Cyador will send more-”

   “Which we will take right here,” explained Nylan. “That's not-”

   “It's not honorable. War isn't honorable, and the Cyadorans certainly aren't. Is slaughtering children honorable?” He tried not to think about what would happen when the Cyadoran troops they had circled arrived in Jerans. Or what might happen all over southern Lornth and Jerans as the angel tactics became more successful.

   After a moment, he rubbed his forehead. Even considering it gave him the echo of a headache. Was he becoming more and more like Ryba? Willing to do whatever was necessary to survive?

   He winced again as his head throbbed, then closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

DAUGHTER.“ GETHAN BOWED, slipping the scroll behind his back. ”How is my young friend Nesslek?"

   “Asleep, thank darkness.” Zeldyan offered a gentle laugh as she closed the door to the sitting room behind her sire. A gentle light and shifting shadows from the candelabra on the low table suffused the room. “He has the energy of three boys, but only a single mother.” Her voice lowered. “It is so hard to believe . . . the chaos fever . . . and now . . .”

   “Was it chaos fever?” asked Gethen. “Fornal seemed to think otherwise.”

   “Fornal... he ... It was. Several children died in the town. You did not see what happened to the angels.” She gestured toward the larger armchair.

   “Thank you.” He paused by the armchair. “They seem to be what they claim, and they have done only good for us. Yet...” He extended the scroll to her before seating himself. “I would like your thoughts.”

   Zeldyan took the straight-backed chair and pulled it closer to the candles, then sat. Absently, she adjusted the malachite hair band before beginning to peruse the scroll, murmuring as she read. “The lord of the grasslands, the great Ildyrom, is unhappy ... he claims that Fornal's barbaric actions in destroying good horses-even if they were Cyadoran horses- prompted the white demons to fire and raze Bestayna.” Zeldyan swallowed. “The whites mutilated all the bodies- before they were dead.” After a pause, she asked, “Have you any word from Fornal?”

   “None, but he has never been overly concerned to inform others.” Gethen's tone was dry. “Especially his sire. I had thought you might have heard.”

   “Not a scroll or a messenger.” The blond regent shook her head. After a moment she resumed reading.

   “Lornth's unwise actions . . . bring down the white empire on all of northwest Candar . . . must insist that Lornth reach an agreement with Cyador ... or face not only the wrath of the Protector of Paradise but the undying enmity of Jerans ...” She laughed harshly. “Sillek was right there, too.”

   “Your consort and lord was right about much. He was better than the holders deserved, and many understand that now.”

   “I am so pleased.” Her tone was icy.

   “Zeldyan-”

   “I know ... I know, but who else will understand? Fornal does not. Like Lady Ellindyja, he is filled with the idea of an honor that will destroy us, much as he dissembles around us.” She stopped and returned her eyes to the words on the parchment.

   “What think you?” asked Gethen when she lifted her eyes. “Ildyrom is worried, but he wants us to face Cyador alone. If we weaken, he will take back the grasslands.”

   Gethen nodded. “I am still bothered about the horses . . . that does not sound like Fornal.”

   “No. That had to be the angels.” Zeldyan frowned, then asked, “Can a lancer ride without a mount? And can a mount be found in the Grass Hills of summer?”

   Gethen pulled at his chin. “You think the angels destroyed the mounts to stop the white demons?”

   “I do not know, but they would not stop if they felt it would work.”

   “Perhaps Fornal was correct in one thing,” suggested Gethen. “These angels seek results.”

   “You wonder if the price will be too high? Ask Sillek . . .  if you can.”

   “Zeldyan-”

   “I am not fair, my sire. Sillek was fair, and tried to make his holders happy. He is dead.”

   A gust of warm air puffed through the open shutters, and the candles flickered, and one almost guttered out before flaming up again.

   The older regent sighed and touched his mostly gray beard. “The angels do their best to save our armsmen and your brother, and he doubtless finds fault with their methods each and every day. Ildyrom wants us to stop the white demons, but not if it carries the fight to his door, though it cost him not a single armsman or grassland raider.” He took a slow breath. “We have just begun, and Fornal was right. Lornth will change because of the angels.”

   “Lornth would change without them, and not for the better, either. What other can we do?”

   “I do not know. How would you answer Ildyrom?”

   “You ask me?” Zeldyan laughed. After a moment of silence, she added, “I would suggest that the mighty lord of the grasslands far to the west of Clynya is welcome to join the fight against the white demons. Until then, he should not suggest conditions for those who fight and protect his borders.”

   “He will not like that.”

   “He will not like any course that is prudent for us.”

   Gethen smiled. “You have a fair hand. Will you write such? I will sign and seal it with you.”

   “Of course, my sire.”

   “And let us hope that the angels can deliver us.”

   Zeldyan nodded, but she did not smile.

IN THE LATE-MORNING sun, Nylan studied the dust rising on the straight stretch of road to the south, the road from Syadtar. Ayrlyn sat in her saddle, glassy-eyed, her senses in the hot and still air somewhere over the source of the dust.

   Tonsar glanced from one angel to the other. “Will stopping their wagons help that much?”

   “They can't live off the land. There are too many of them. Even we have to get some supplies by wagon. So what happens if they start getting short on supplies?” asked Nylan.

   “They send for more supplies?”

   “And if their messengers don't get through?”

   “They must forage.”

   “And if we keep shooting arrows at their foragers?” asked Ayrlyn, picking up the thread of the argument.

   “Ah ... and if they send more supplies, we do this again?” Tonsar beamed, then frowned. “But they will send more lancers the next time.”

   “More lancers eat more,” Nylan said dryly.

   Tonsar scratched his head.

   Ayrlyn shook herself, then coughed. Her mount sidestepped on the mixture of grass and dirt that capped the hilltop, raising puffs of dust that added to the dust already coating the chestnut's lower legs. The redhead reined up the chestnut and looked to Nylan. “There are three supply wagons. From what I can tell, there are less than a score in guards, and they're not paying much attention.”

   “Any archers?”

   “I didn't see any,” answered Ayrlyn.

   The silver-haired angel nodded.

   “With a glass, I have seen such screeing, but never without. Truly, she is a dark angel.” The subofficer on the mount beside Nylan coughed after he spoke.

   “Thanks, Tonsar, but I'm just a healer who can sense the winds and use them to see things that aren't too far away.” She raised herself slightly in the saddle and readjusted her position. “We need to set up.”

   “Positions,” said Nylan.

   “Positions for the attack! For the attack!” ordered Tonsar. “We will destroy these white demons.”

   The angels eased their mounts downhill toward the curve in the road, and toward the hill that held the concealed archery blind overlooking the ambush point. Tonsar turned his mount toward the curving swale from where the rest of the squad would attack.

   Two other riders-Ailsor and Buretek-eased their mounts from Tonsar's group and drew up behind the angels. The four rode downhill to the Lornth-Syadtar road.

   Nylan took a last look at the waist-high jumble of smooth boulders that had been pried laboriously from beneath the earth-a barrier that left no room at all for passage on the uphill side of the road and a steep incline on the downhill shoulder. “No wagon will pass that.”

   “Especially not one driven by a white demon,” ventured Buretek.

   “It wouldn't matter if a black angel drove it,” Nylan answered.

   Buretek and Ailsor exchanged quizzical glances, and the engineer repressed a sigh. A barrier was a barrier. Why did so much get personalized in Candar?

   “Because,” answered Ayrlyn quietly, “everything is personal in lower-tech cultures. Patterns are obscured by the strength of personalities and by the seemingly random operation of natural forces.”

   “How did you know-”

   “I just did.” A faint smile followed the redhead's shrug.

   All too often Ayrlyn seemed to read his thoughts. Another aspect of order-field mastery?

   The redhead turned her mount to the left and rode up the dusty road for another three hundred cubits until she came to the grassy depression that led to the rear of the hill.

   The three men rode silently behind her, up the slope to the back of the hill the road climbed, to a flatter area shielded from the southern road and the ambush site.

   Ayrlyn paused before dismounting, her eyes glazing momentarily. “They're still on the road. Not any scouts out.”

   “Stupid,” suggested Buretek.

   “Not really,” said Ayrlyn mildly. “Who has ever challenged the might of Cyador, or attacked a supply wagon? You don't guard against things that don't usually happen-not the first time. Some people never do.” She swung out of the saddle and led the chestnut toward the tieline.

   “. . . still seems stupid . . .” murmured the square-jawed archer as he tethered his own mount and then started up the slope.

   What sort of monster are you creating by bringing the total warfare concept to Candar? One you can survive? And how many will pay for how long? Nylan winced as he dismounted and tethered his mare to the tieline that ran between two stakes he had anchored earlier. Pushing away the words in his thoughts, he hoped the anchors held, although, supposedly, a well-broken mount would not break away. He glanced at the brown mare, halt-chewing on the sparse brown grass. She was certainly strong enough to break the line if she put an effort into the attempt, but hadn't tried anything like that. Were even animals conditioned by patterns not to see the obvious? And what was he missing?

   “We need to get in position,” suggested Ayrlyn. “Oh . . . sorry.” Nylan unfastened the composite bow and his blades and followed her up the rise and down the slope to the trench behind the grass-and-brush screen.

   Buretek and Ailsor were already waiting, one at each end of the blind, setting out their shafts.

   “I didn't see any dust from the hilltop,” said Ailsor. “They're taking their time,” answered Ayrlyn. “You don't raise as much dust when you plod. They'll get here soon enough.”

   Nylan wanted to nod at that. He wasn't looking forward to the ambush, successful though be hoped it would be.

   “Wish we could do this on horse,” offered Buretek after a period of silence. “It could be chancy getting out of here if something goes wrong.”

   “It won't,” Nylan answered.

   “It won't,” Ayrlyn added, “but I'm not happy either to be on foot in the middle of nowhere.” She sat in the bottom of the narrow trench and checked her bow for the fourth time, ignoring the minute cuts on her fingers and hands from plaiting the grass-and-brush screen that cloaked the blind.

   Nylan looked at his hands-fewer cuts, but he'd both dug and plaited. “The horses will be secure enough tied to those stakes.”

   “Hoping it is so, ser . . .” murmured Ailsor from beside Nylan. Unlike Ayrlyn, the three men knelt, rather than sat. Ailsor's hands, like Ayrlyn's and Nylan's, bore cuts.

   Ayrlyn's eyes glazed over again, briefly. “They're at the bottom of the hill now.”

   “Quiet. . .” Nylan said.

   The four waited.

   “. . . at the turn . . . get ready . . .”

   Ayrlyn's eyes cleared, and the four rose and nocked arrows, waiting, concealed by the grass and brush screen.

   The creak of wagons and the low murmur of voices drifted uphill.

   “Darkness! Not a rock demon-near everywhere... and then this!”

   “. . . didn't expect this . . .”

   Nylan waited as the voices echoed uphill until all three wagons had stopped, and until the squad of a dozen lancers or so pushed toward the apparent landslide-although Nylan hoped none of them thought about the fact that the Grass Hills weren't especially rocky!

   “All right, fire!” hissed Nylan.

   Buretek and Ailsor began to pump shafts into the close-knit Cyadorans, followed by Ayrlyn and Nylan.

   “Ambush!”

   “... a trap!”

   “Ride toward those bushes. That's where . . .”

   Nylan calculated. “Drop the stones, Tonsar!”

   Half a dozen more boulders, dug from just beneath the hillside's surface, rolled down into the confined area of the road filled with riders and wagons, one after the other, and a dusty cloud rolled downhill behind the rocks.

   Wheeeeee...... The scream of an injured horse rose above the voices.

   “Move it!”

   “. . . where ...”

   The first half-squad, led by Fuera, the blond hothead, pounded up from the south behind the confused Cyadorans. With their sharp-edged blades out and ready, the Lornians took out the first of the white riders before the Cyadorans realized they were under attack from both sides.

   Nylan forced his eyes back on the white teamsters and the forward white guards, loosing another black iron shaft from his composite bow.

   The shaft struck-a lancer with a green sash-and exploded. Nylan staggered as the white chaos force recoiled back up the hillside.

   “What was that?” hissed Ailsor.

   “Order-chaos collision,” snapped Ayrlyn. “Keep firing, demon-damn-it!”

   Nylan loosed three more shafts before another hit, with a smaller explosion, but enough of one that the white-recoil jarred his fingers, and he staggered in his tracks.

   He swayed for a moment, putting down a hand to steady himself, since white stars seemed to be exploding in his eyes.

   “. . . frig . . . frig . . .” muttered Ayrlyn. “Damned recoils ...”

   By the time Nylan could begin to pick up images, most of the whites were down, sprawled on the wagons or the ground.

   The last of the Cyadoran armsmen turned his mount back toward distant Syadtar.

   Despite the fire white in his head, Nylan croaked out: “Get him, Buretek.”

   It took the young archer three shafts, but the armsman fell, as the others had.

   Ailsor looked tiredly at Nylan, his bow almost hanging in his hands. “That... well... it wasn't really a fight, was it?”

   “No,” Nylan admitted with a shrug. “It wasn't.” He coughed, trying to clear his throat. “And it's not honorable. War isn't honorable, and the Cyadorans certainly aren't. Is slaughtering children honorable?”

   Ailsor looked dumbly at the engineer.

   “What harm would it have done to let a few escape? Is that what you wanted to know, Ailsor?” asked Nylan.

   The archer looked down at the tumbled plaited-grass screen.

   “It would have destroyed the effect,” Ayrlyn answered, her voice hoarse and tired. “We don't want them knowing what happened.” She set aside the bow. “Go get the shovels. We need to fill this in. Buretek can stay here. You get his mount, too.”

   After a moment, Ailsor nodded.

   “I'll get them and bring back your mount,” the engineer told Ayrlyn, who nodded wearily. Nylan followed the archer, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.

   After untethering both mounts, Nylan worked loose one stake, then the other, and rolled the rope around the two before slipping them into a saddlebag. By then, Ailsor had disappeared, riding back to the ambush site leading Buretek's mount.

   The engineer mounted and led Ayrlyn's mount around the hill and down the road to just below where the redhead stood, dismantling the screen and tossing the pieces into the trench. She reached up for the shovel before Nylan extended it.

   “Are you sure you should be digging?”

   “It's not digging, just pushing stuff back in the trench. Besides, physical work helps, somehow.” She glanced up. “Drop the reins. She'll stay.”

   With the redhead's tone, Nylan would have stayed put too, if he'd been the mare. He eased his mount down the slope, slowly picking his way above the rock barricade.

   Tonsar waited on his horse on the far side. “It worked. You were right, ser angel.”

   “How many did we lose?”

   “Three. Winse, Ungit, and Duira. Ungit...” Tonsar shook his head. “He did not listen.”

   “There's always someone who doesn't get the word.” The engineer turned the mare. “Siplor, you take over that first wagon. Meresat... you've got the second. You'll need to replace that snapped wheel. Use the spare on the rear.”

   Nylan edged the mare up to the first wagon, mostly filled with kegs.

   “That's real Cyad beer!” Siplor grinned at the angel. “And biscuits, and two wheels of cheese.”

   “We'll share it with the others at camp, but you get to dole it out.” Nylan forced a smile, flicking the reins gently to ease the mare to the second heavy wagon, filled mostly with barrels stacked on end. The white-brown powder around the waxed end-ropes indicated that some had to be flour.

   Meresat looked glumly at the broken left front wheel. “You can do it,” Nylan encouraged him, ignoring his own headache and the white flashes that blocked his vision intermittently. “Or would you rather dig burial trenches?”

   “No, ser.” Meresat slowly trudged to the spare wheel mounted on the rear of the wagon.

   From above the barricade, Ayrlyn cleared her throat, then ordered, “Wuerek you and your group-let's get those bodies buried. Over there out of sight of the road, and deep enough that scavengers don't dig them up.”

   Nylan could sense-somehow-that they shared the same, or similar, headaches and intermittent vision. Buretek and Ailsor shifted the shovel between themselves and were finishing the work of filling in the archery blind.

   Ayrlyn mounted the chestnut, but remained on the uphill part of the road above the barrier.

   “Fuera-the rest of you,” rasped the engineer, “get the rocks back in the places we set.”

   “Why are we moving the rocks off the road?” Nylan glanced around, but couldn't identify the speaker, not when he had to concentrate even to see. He took a deep breath before answering. “We want the Cyadorans not to know what happened. If armsmen and lancers just disappear, that'll make a lot of their people unhappy, hopefully with their commanders. How would you feel if your supply wagons and some reinforcements disappeared without a trace?”

   “. . . nasty thoughts, he has . . .”

   “. .. keep telling you that you don't mess with angels ...”

   “. . . ways of the angels . . .” Tonsar glanced at Ayrlyn, then at Nylan, and shook his head.

   Nylan was afraid a lot more head-shaking would be going on before the fighting was all over-if it were ever all over. Somehow one battle just led to another. Was that human history on every planet in every universe? “. . . the regent. . . call it dishonorable . . .”

   “... ha ... rather be dishonorable than dead . . .” Fornal might not like Nylan's tactics, but he wouldn't mind the food-or the beer. Neither would the armsmen mind the improved fare.

   With his left hand, Nylan rubbed the back of his neck, then his temples, but the headache still pounded through his skull.